Traffic

Driving in Nigeria is an interesting experience.  

Some weeks ago there was a major crash on the Bukuru-Jos expressway.  The holdups lasted all afternoon and were still bad when it was time for me to take James and Ruth home from school.  We sat in the traffic jam, torn between turning the engine off and slowly suffocating in the heat and fumes or shutting the windows, leaving it on and using the air conditioning whilst adding to the pollution.

Occasionally our hopes of getting home grew when we inched forwards.  Sadly this was not because the blockage was being cleared but happened as others reached the point where they could do a u-turn and head back.  We got to that point and had to make the vital decision, escape or stick it out, but decided to go onwards – there seemed to be a rescue operation going on.  The large lorry skewed across the road was being moved.  The solitary traffic police officer was doing what he could, enthusiastically assisted by many stranded motorists.  This is one of the things in Nigeria.  Inside every man walking down the road is a traffic policeman longing to get out.  At the slightest opportunity (and there are many snarl-ups) a stray pedestrian will march authoritatively into the road and start directing traffic.  Amazingly, drivers take heed.  Last time I was shopping in town it was a very small boy who stopped the cars to let me reverse out; they start young out here.

Back to our traffic jam. 

The lorry which had been blocking all lanes of the dual carriageway was slowly moved out of the way.  In the UK this would reveal a line of cars waiting patiently on their own side of the road and two empty lanes on the other, thus enabling the traffic to start flowing again.  It doesn’t work like that in Nigeria.  What side of the road do Nigerians drive on?  Whichever is fastest.  If there’s a queue of traffic, whether that’s at a roundabout in the morning rush hour or after an accident, instead of waiting in turn many Nigerian drivers can’t resist the temptation of the empty carriageway on the other side of the road.  They zoom up in the face of the oncoming traffic and expect to be allowed into the queue before they’re hit by cars coming the other way.  Some mornings I can be waiting on a single lane road before a roundabout on the way to school with cars coming past me on the left and also on the dirt on my right where the road ends.  It requires a lot of grace to allow them back in to the queue and I only do it to avoid accidents.

When the road was cleared four lanes of solid traffic were revealed ahead of us, all facing the same direction and all starting to move at once.  There was nowhere for us to go.  The traffic police man gave up and sat and watched as the chaos deepened.  The two lanes going in our direction edged forwards to fill the gap left by the accident, the four lanes in the other direction did likewise and tried to squeeze into the two they were supposed to fill.  If it hadn’t been for a couple of amateur traffic directors who did a far better job than the professional, I have no idea how the gridlock would have been resolved or how many more hours we’d have been stuck there.  Slowly they guided cars off the road so we could drive along the dirt until we’d passed the vehicles on the wrong side.  Thankfully at this point there wasn’t the foot high drop off the edge that there often is.  Our 30 minute journey took us nearly three hours.  I was glad to get home before dark.  (That’s another thing: cars here have headlights (mostly) but everything is either off or on full strength.  The dipped headlight is a sign of weakness,  just as an amplifier not turned up to its loudest is a sign of lack of commitment.)

There are however very few traffic cones in Nigeria.  Drivers are trusted to see men at work and respect them.  If there’s an obstacle in the road a line of leafy branches warns oncoming traffic to proceed with caution.  Probably more environmentally friendly than plastic cones but the first few times I came across them I just thought a tree had been blown about.